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Nvidia Official reference drivers are available from their site, Currently 3.68, anything later than that are unofficial. The latest, (372) include palletised texture support.

What you should appreaciate with later driver releases, benchmarking results will probably get slightly worse as more features of this card are enabled with the newer driver versions,

They should make the images/games look better and perform better, but as a factor of this benchmark lower, you will get higher 3D mark results with 353 based drivers than the latest versions as lighting effects have been enabled in the newer versions.

Another feature that will give a performance hit will be AA when implemented but we should be getting AGP sidebanding enabled soon that might help performance somewhat. I've included the latest FAQ you may find interesting

BladeRunner

I've included the latest Annihilator faq from the Creative site, all the Geforce cards have the same basic design so most of the faq will apply to other makes.

Updated the Unified download link to what it really is: http://www.americas.creative.com/hotgraphics/unified/
Added a (keep it above 16 as this disables AGP) bit to the flashing and
lockup suggestions where it suggests to change the AGP aperture.
Added 'despite what you may have read in reviews' to the DVI / TV-OUT
question.

--------

Q. Does the Annihilator or the Annihilator Pro have extra outputs like
TV-OUT or DVI?

No, despite what you may have read in reviews. There is only the standard
monitor output.

Q. On some levels in Quake 3 Arena I get severe slowdowns with all of the
settings maxed out. How can I fix this?

Turn down the texture colour depth to 16-bit or slide the texture detail
slider down one notch. There's not quite enough memory to store all the
textures in the video memory on certain levels.

Q. How can I completely uninstall old NVIDIA GeForce or Creative Labs
Annihilator drivers?

This is the standard advice from Creative on removing old drivers:

Run any uninstall from Add/Remove Programs. These frequently are not totally
thorough but should be done anyway.

After you reboot, delete these files if found:
In C:\Windows\System: nv*.*, bc*.*, bls*.*, 3dbg*.* (the latter 3 only
apply to Creative drivers)
In C:\Windows\Inf: drvdata.bin, drvidx.bin, 3dbg*.inf, nv*.inf
In C:\Windows\Inf\Other: 3dbg*.inf, nv*.inf

Firstly, there are Creative's driver sets. They are available on Creative's
site, and although they may be out of date they have the Blaster Control
Panel with may have a few extra options when compared to the NVIDIA
reference drivers. Currently they are based on NVIDIA's 3.62 reference
drivers and are available from: http://ftp.ctlsg.creaf.com/files/cre...gfw9x-beta.zip

Secondly, there are NVIDIA's reference drivers. The official drivers are
available on NVIDIA's site: http://www.nvidia.com.
There are generally a few versions available: one (or two) official versions
and some leaked versions that are not officially supported but may be faster
or have more features than the official drivers (and may also be slower and
have less features)

Which set should you use? If you can't live without the BlasterControl,
stick with Creative's drivers. Otherwise use the NVIDIA drivers. It's really
up to you if you use the latest leaked drivers or not - you'll have to
benchmark them on your system to see if they have any advantages.

Q. How can I enable the overclocking utility in NVIDIA's drivers?
Q. How can I enable the vsync changing area of the control panel in NVIDIA's
drivers?

Q. What is the difference between an Annihilator and an Annihilator Pro?
Q. What is the difference between an SDR and a DDR board?
Q. How can I tell if my board is SDR or DDR?

The Annihilator board has SDR memory: the Pro board has DDR memory. DDR is
twice as fast as SDR, and so at high resolutions (1024x768x32 and above) the
DDR board is faster than the SDR board. SDR memory has pins on only two
sides: DDR memory has pins on all four sides.

Q. Why can't I overclock higher than (insert speed here) when others are
clocking much higher?

The NVIDIA reference drivers will allow you to overclock higher than the
Creative drivers.

It is possible to alter the limits of the Creative overclocking utility
inside the utility.

DDR memory is clocked at twice the speed of SDR memory: therefore it is
possible to overclock higher as well.

Q. What DVD software can I use with my GeForce?

You can use any DVD software with the GeForce, but some software supports
the GeForce's DVD acceleration features (Motion Compensation - MC) so that
CPU utilisation is reduced while the DVD is playing.

PowerDVD 2.55 supports the GeForce's MC. A demo version can be downloaded at
the following website: http://www.3dsl.com

WinDVD 2000 also supports GeForce MC, but you have to enable it in the
registry. Go to http://www.inmatrix.com
to download DVD Genie, a program which will allow you to enable the MC
support easily.

Q. What's all this with the GeForce and the Athlon?

The GeForce has stability problems when using Athlon motherboards and AGP2X,
due to 'poor filtering on the AGP strobe line'. NVIDIA have released drivers
(3.62 onwards) that will disable AGP2X if an Athlon is detected. However,
some Athlon motherboards do not display this instability, and on these
motherboards you can use the registry file athlon2x.reg - available here: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/christopher.hill/athlon2x.reg
This will enable the AGP2X support no matter what motherboard and chip you
have. Creative will also be releasing drivers soon which will enable you to
force AGP2X support on any motherboard.

Q. What's all this with the GeForce and early LX / BX / Via 133
motherboards?

Some early LX, BX and Via 133 motherboards do not have a proper
implementation of AGP, which means that they do not supply enough power to
the GeForce card. This can cause instability problems. Unfortunately the
only way to see if your motherboard will work is to try it out, or ask if
anyone has your motherboard and can successfully use the GeForce on it. It
is also possible that a BIOS update will be able to fix this problem.

Via 133 motherboards that CANNOT support the GeForce:
Early Transcend AVD-1

If you have an LX motherboard and the GeForce does or does not work on it,
please tell me and I will update the FAQ. If you have a BX or Via 133
motherboard that does NOT work, please tell me and I'll update (but DON'T
tell me if your BX / Via 133 motherboard does work, please).

Q. Will my Gigabyte BX2000 work with the GeForce?

Yes, so long as you have the revision which has a 'Voodoo3' jumper. If you
set this on the card should work. If it does not have this jumper, it cannot
meet the AGP specification (it does not provide enough current for the
GeForce). You'll either have to replace the board, or perform some
rewiring - see the diagram at: http://www.nickles.de/artikel/html/29.htm

Q. How can I get my Asus P5A working with my GeForce?

These instructions were written by Daniel Cowdery:

The following is a step by step manual to prepare your Asus P5A Motherboard
for the GeForce. If followed EXACTLY these should work. DO NOT OVERCLOCK
WITH THIS CARD. The P5A, esp. older revisions, creates AGP noise feedback on
overclocking of the board. There is no fix for this (other than a new
motherboard).

ALI AGP CONTROL UTILITY - Used to adjust features of the AGP port..Will
cause MAJOR issues if used improperly - USE AT OWN RISK (for your
overclockers out there):
ftp://www.ali.com.tw/driver/autil03.zip
or
ftp://ftp.nsysu.edu.tw/Vendors/ALi/driver/autil03.zip

IDE BUSMASTER CONTROLLER - Great utility to use to make sure your UDMA is
working. Very safe, and easy to use. Must have the newest IDE drivers
provided above:
ftp://www.ali.com.tw/driver/iutil103.zip
or
ftp://coda.cc.nctu.edu.tw/vendors/ALi/iutil103.zip

STEP 2: Alter the hardware...

ADJUST THE VOLTAGE OF YOUR MOTHERBOARD
You must alter two jumper settings - VIO1 (AGP voltage to 3.6) and OFTEST
(across the board 10% voltage increase):

VIO1 is directly right of the dimm chipset if your CPU were at the top of
the board, IO and serial ports facing left. OFTEST is directly below the VID
jumpers. The VID jumpers are located to the right of the VIO jumpers. A
diagram is provided below. Place jumpers on the "*" indicated bridge.

Q. What is the status of AGP sidebanding in the latest drivers?
Q. What is the status of anti-aliasing in the latest drivers?
Q. What is the status of palletised textures in the latest drivers?
Q. Can I force a 16-bit z-buffer in the latest drivers?

They are all currently disabled, although soon there should be drivers
released that will support them. In addition Creative are also developing
drivers that will enable you to select AGP sidebanding if you want to.

The sidebanding registry hack (involving the DISABLEAGPSIDEBAND key) that is
being spread around is fake and does not work.

Q. My 2D image quality is poor (fuzzy, ghosting, smeared bold text). How can
I fix it?
Q. I have 2D image quality problems with jittery text. How can I fix it?

If you have BNC inputs to your monitor try buying a lead that will allow you
to use them.

Otherwise, this appears to be a driver bug, that should be fixed soon. In
the meantime, try these things:

Change the refresh rate

Try another monitor and cable

It is also possible that this problem only turns up after recovering from
Standby. Try rebooting.

In the end this is a problem that there is no definite solution. If none of
these help, wait for the drivers to be fixed or return your card.

Q. Does the GeForce support Texture Compression (DXTC)?

Yes, but you cannot use the compressed textures in Unreal Tournament because
they are only available under S3's MeTaL API.

Q. In the DXDiag Display tab, I get AGP Not Available. What's up?

Have you got Windows 95? You must have OSR2 and the USB supplement
installed. If this does not help, you might have to upgrade to Windows 98.

Q. My GeForce keeps on locking up. How can I fix it?

There are a number of causes of this:

Are you overclocking either the GeForce or your processor? If you are, try
clocking back to normal, leaving the case lid off and underclocking and see
if it fixes the problem. If it does, you need more cooling.

Have you assigned an IRQ to VGA in your BIOS? If not, do so.

Have you got an IRQ conflict with the GeForce and another card? If so, try
moving the card to another slot or assigning a different IRQ to that slot in
the BIOS.

Are you running a virus checker in the background? Try disabling it.

Try changing your AGP Aperture to another value (keep it above 16 as this
disables AGP).

Try upgrading your PC's BIOS to the latest version.

Make sure that old drivers are cleaned out by using the method described in
the question: 'How can I completely uninstall old NVIDIA or Creative Labs
GeForce drivers?'

If you have an LX based motherboard read the section of the FAQ on LX
motherboards.

If you have an Athlon motherboard, try installing the latest AGP driver and
also read the section of the FAQ on Athlon motherboards.

Try connecting your CPU fan to another socket on the motherboard.

Try reseating all of the components on your motherboard (including power
leads and the GeForce).

Try turning up the I/O voltage of the motherboard in the BIOS by a small
amount if your BIOS supports it.

Try switching on AGP Turbo, turning up the bus speed slightly, or setting
your AGP ratio to 1:1 (in that order) - this will put extra strain on the
card, but it seems to fix the problem for some people.

Try turning down the AGP Aperture to 16 or below, if your motherboard
supports it. This will disable AGP, but may fix your problem. You can also
use DXDIAG to disable AGP.

Q. I have problems with flashing textures. How can I fix it?

Driver versions 3.67 and above should fix this problem for some people:
however, if they don't help, here are some other solutions:

Try changing your AGP Aperture to another value (keep it above 16 as this
disables AGP).

Try upgrading your PC's BIOS to the latest version.

Try connecting your CPU fan to another socket on the motherboard.

Try reseating all of the components on your motherboard (including power
leads and the GeForce).

Try turning up the I/O voltage of the motherboard in the BIOS by a small
amount.

Try taking out all but one of your memory chips, if you have more than one.
If this solves the problem, try another power supply that is more powerful
(300 watts is a good power level to try).

Try switching on AGP Turbo, turning up the bus speed, or setting your AGP
ratio to 1:1, (in that order) - this will put extra strain on the card, but
it seems to fix the problem for some people.

Try turning down the AGP Aperture to 16 or below, if your motherboard
supports it. This will disable AGP, but may fix your problem. You can also
use DXDIAG to disable AGP.

Q. I get an orange screen with Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens. How can I fix
it?

Make sure Fog Table Emulation is switched on in the Direct3D section of the
NVIDIA control panel, as outlined in the DMZG FAQ.

If this doesn't help, try switching to the 3.68 drivers - it may be a case
of T&L being messed up by out of date drivers. If these drivers still don't
help then try 3.53 drivers.

Q. Unreal Tournament runs very badly on my GeForce. How can I speed it up?

3. In Desktop Properties =&gt; NVIDIA Control Panel =&gt; More D3D Settings =&gt; Set
PCI Texture Memory Size to 63 (assuming you have 128MB of RAM)

4. Disable Vsync

5. Render no more than 5 frames ahead

Q. The menu text in Unreal Tournament is distorted. How can I fix it?

In the GeForce Direct3D options, reset the Texture Alignment back to 3.

Q. I get really horrible texture bleeding and small flashing triangles all
over the place. How can I fix it?

Try reflashing the video card's BIOS with the BIOS supplied from the CD by
copying the BIOS files to your hard drive, rebooting, pressing F8 on the
Starting Windows9x screen and selecting 'Safe Mode Command Prompt' and then
running the utility. The version is the same as the version currently on
your card but it may fix the problem.

Q. What is Unified? How can I get it? Why doesn't my serial number work?

Unified is a Glide wrapper created by Creative, so that you can run 3dfx
only games on your non-3dfx card. You can download it from: http://www.americas.creative.com/hotgraphics/unified/
However, it may not accept your serial number (you should try using the one
on the actual card that begins with T). If you still can't get it to work,
email William Ball at bball@creativelabs.com and he will mail the files to
you.

Q. How powerful should my power supply be in order to use the Annihilator?

At least 250 watts is recommended: however, you may still be able to run it
on 230W or lower (mine runs on 200W).

Q. I get what looks like missing polygons on the wheels and seat of the bike
in Motocross Madness. How can I fix it?

This is a known bug and NVIDIA are looking into it.

Q. How can I get the best possible image quality from Quake 3 Arena?

Firstly, adjust all settings to High Quality in the menu options of Quake 3
Arena.

These settings were suggested by John Carmack in order to make the best use
of the GeForce - type them in the console:

Q. What should my AGP Aperture size be set to?
Q. How can I change my AGP Aperture size?

You can only change this in your BIOS setup. It should be set to half your
system RAM if possible, and if not it should be set at some point below or
equal to the size of your RAM. However, some people have experienced
advantages from setting it to 256 even when you have less than 256MB of RAM:
experiment to find out which setting is best for your system.

Q. Can I connect my hardware DVD decoder to my Annihilator?

If you have a standard 26 pin VMI connector on the DVD decoder you can plug
the cable into the left half (near the bracket) of the VIP connector on the
Annihilator. However, pins 14/27 will be in the way - you will have to bend
them out of the way. Note however that doing this isn't officially supported

Q. I (occasionally or always) get 16MB of video RAM reported on my
Annihilator. What's up?

Try slightly changing your FSB speed.

You may want to replace the card even if this does help: this problem is
probably a bad solder joint on one of the memory chips that causes problems
occasionally or all the time.

Q. When I try to play MPEG files with Windows Media Player I get out-of-sync
sound/green bars/too large playback. I have WinDVD installed. How can I fix
it?

This solution was provided by X-Default User-X:

What you have to do is rename, delete, or unregister (your choice) the two
*.ax files in the Program Files\InterVideo directory. The files should be
named:

iviaudio.ax
ivivideo.ax

These are DirectShow filters that allow Windows Media player to play DVDs
(provided you know how to enable it via a registry hack) and MPEG2 VOB
files. They were primarily designed for the few DVD games out there that use
MPEG2 videos for their cut scenes. For some reason, they also take the task
of playing regular MPEG1 files when the original filters that come with
Windows Media Player 6.4 are more than adequate.

Registering/unregistering DirectShow filters will not affect WinDVD's
ability to play DVD movies.

Q. If I turn on precaching in Unreal Tournament it crashes. How can I fix
this?

This possible solution was provided by Jarhead

Try uninstalling ALL Unreal engine based games and then reinstalling UT. If
this helps, you can try uninstalling all Unreal games, then installing them
one by one, but with UT last. The problem appears to be with UT using the
original Unreal D3D engine instead of it's own vastly updated engine, and
installing UT last will stop this if it is your problem - however, this
solution doesn't work for everyone, and if it doesn't you'll have to turn
off precaching until another solution is found.

Yeah, I agree with Q3A performance, it is smoother and I got some extra frames outa it. But my 3D Mark dropped by about 500-700 points, that kinda threw me off. Actually upset me a little. I'll probably return back to the other drivers.

I seem to have some problems with my Elsa Erazor X2 Geforce DDR
getting only 56 fps @ 1024 high quality in Quake3 Arena.
I have a Athlon 650 with 128 mb PC100 RAM
I see people getting 80 fps
What's wrong with my card?

What drivers are you using? I'm not sure but I think Elsa's are based on the 3.68

:Q. What's all this with the GeForce and the Athlon?

The GeForce has stability problems when using Athlon motherboards and AGP2X,
due to 'poor filtering on the AGP strobe line'. NVIDIA have released drivers
(3.62 onwards) that will disable AGP2X if an Athlon is detected. However,
some Athlon motherboards do not display this instability, and on these
motherboards you can use the registry file athlon2x.reg - available here: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/christopher.hill/athlon2x.reg
This will enable the AGP2X support no matter what motherboard and chip you
have. Creative will also be releasing drivers soon which will enable you to
force AGP2X support on any motherboard.

Check your refresh rate and whether vsync is enabled. I have it enabled with a refresh rate of 85hz.

Read the rest of the faq as most of it applies to all geforce cards.

Also there are some dll tweaks that can give up to 20% increase in fps and you should knock the texture detail slider down 1 notch as the on board memory can't cope in a few texture rich places.

with a bit of tweaking you should get a higher fps I get 82fps in 1024x768 full details (with tex slider down one notch)

BLADERUNNER You're gonna love this!
I actually had my CPU placed back down to 366 because I defragged my harddrive ( I have to 'cus when it's overclocked it crashes in a defrag)so It was clocked @ 366 instead of 458, once I did that I got almost a 1000 fps increase, so that was impressive. Well sorry for the misinformation.

No problem, I had a similar thing when I first O/c'd a system. It was a PII 350 @ 501 and when I had reformatted it would crash on installing windows at the bit where it says "windows will restart in 15 seconds" it would start to boot up and then nothing. took me a while to realise it was the O/c stopping it, set to normal clock no problem then o/c'd it after installing everything.

how about this one...Do you have the site where I can download the most recent OpenGL setup? I got mine from the Quake 3 disk, but I heard there's either a new beta version out, or a new version. But I can't locate them. Checked www.OpenGL.org and they used to have the beta out, but I can't find it, help please.